


Conflicted

by idrilhadhafang



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Especially from this misogynistic-as-fuck fandom, Gen, Leia Organa Deserves Better, Mother-Son Relationship, Movie: Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Movie: Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Movie: Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-15
Updated: 2020-05-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:13:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24202645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idrilhadhafang/pseuds/idrilhadhafang
Summary: Leia, and her feelings about her son.
Relationships: Leia Organa & Kylo Ren
Kudos: 7
Collections: Gen Prompt Bingo Round 18





	Conflicted

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: Conflicting Obligations/Oaths
> 
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

She doesn’t know how to tell Poe. She just knows that she’s going to have to tell him personally at some point. He deserves to know. She doesn’t know if Ben explained to him where he went, anything of that sort. She can feel her heart break, just thinking about it.   
  
Poe deserved more.   
  
Ben deserved more, and that fact stabs through Leia much like a vibroblade. The worst part is that she’s good as responsible. How did she get there? She’d managed to command a Rebellion and strangle a Hutt with her own chains, but when Snoke was threatening her son, she couldn’t save him.   
  
How did she get here? How did this happen?  
  
She wonders how to tell Poe. There’s nothing that can really sugarcoat the simple, honest fact that Ben’s become a monster. The man Poe loved. The man who would have worshipped the ground Poe walked on, who would have damned the galaxy to save him.   
  
And she’ll have to —  
  
(She thinks of her visions. She thinks of dueling an older Ben, of dealing the killing blow — and maniacal laughter, like she’s too familiar with. She quit being a Jedi because the Force was cruel, and it’s forcing her to kill her own son. Hadn’t Darth Traya tried to kill the Force because it used people as dejarik pieces? Leia can’t disagree with her)  
  
Maybe there’s a third way. There has to be. People will say it’s impossible, but Leia Organa’s more than willing to do the impossible. To defy the Force. To show that she won’t _let_ the Force manipulate her into killing her little angel, Han’s little bandit.   
  
She has to find a way. Any way at all.   
  
***  
  
Han’s reluctant at first. It’s like he thinks he’s forcing himself to “accept the truth” about Ben — that he’s lost, and not coming back. Like Han’s just so broken. It’s his problem — the idea that plain and simply, he loves Ben with all his heart, and even trying to “accept the truth" is painful.   
  
Leia encourages him to go. It’s not just for her, or for Ben (after all, Ben loved his father, was his father’s boy, and Leia isn’t about to abandon the Resistance, or risk putting her visions in motion. She just can’t), but Han. To restore Han’s faith as well.   
  
She knows that there’s a pinprick of Ben in the armored imitation called Kylo Ren. She knows there’s a part of him that still believes wholeheartedly in goodness, in hope, in Poe (even thinking back to Poe’s interrogation, she can’t help but feel there’s something wrong with it, that the real Ben, the proper Ben, wouldn’t even think of hurting Poe), in everything. That believes.   
  
She wonders, when Ben doesn’t win against the darkness Snoke’s put in him, if she’s good as Han’s murderer. What’s a word in Basic for the murderer of one’s own spouse? She feels like it. (Or maybe the Force is trying to push her towards this confrontation with her son, like it’s a finality, unavoidable...)  
  
She feels Han’s faith in Ben in her nightmares, over and over again, and her son’s sanity shattering. He somehow thought killing his father would make the pain stop. It won’t.   
  
In Leia’s nightmares, she sees him, picking off his loved ones one by one, trying to shrink the gaping, yawning maw in his heart — and failing.   
  
***  
  
It’s not the Raddus where she loses faith in him, but Crait. At least on the Raddus, he hesitated. There was a moment, just a moment, of clarity where he didn’t seem to blame her. Hate her, even. He was working on hating her, just because he thought she didn’t want him.   
  
(Snoke, again. So many lies, and the architecture is difficult to see)  
  
It’s Crait. Feeling that horrible certainty, that triumph — he’s nothing like Ben, Kylo Ren. He’s unrecognizable, as vile as Vader or Palpatine — and she never thought that she would ever say that about her son.   
  
She wishes, momentarily, that she didn’t have a son. And then the thought passes, and she’s left with shame, and a desire to find someone to blame.   
  
When she tells Luke that Ben is gone, she finds no pleasure in it. She’s not throwing a party. She’s not the evil witch, or the ogre, even if Ben wants her to be. (He probably wants somebody to blame, she thinks. Typical) Instead, she hurts. Instead, it stabs her to the core — and even Luke’s reassurances are hardly any comfort.   
  
***  
  
When the end comes, Leia still loves Ben.   
  
She’s frustrated with him too, angry, but she can also remember the boy he was. The young man he was, before it all went wrong. And even as Kylo and Rey duel on the moon where the remnants of the second Death Star crashed, she knows what she has to do.   
  
She has to tell him the truth.   
  
It starts with a name, and a projection — a projection of every bit of acceptance, love and forgiveness to him that she can muster. And she is running short — she sees, for a moment, a vision of Ben, heading to Exegol not to destroy — but to save his soul.   
  
She has faith in Ben. It’s all right that she’s dying. She lived a life with challenges and joys — but the joys shone all the brighter.


End file.
